It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that commercial equipment is available to apply roofing seam tape to a single ply membrane surface. Such conventional systems have been generally designed to lay material on a roof that comes in roll form and is applied in sheet form. These prior art pieces of equipment have ranged from the effective but complicated to the ineffective.
Some conventional systems require an elaborate routing of the rolled material through the conventional system as it is applied to the roof. Other forms of conventional pieces of equipment that utilize modified bitumen torch applied material have required platforms and implementation of heat in order to properly lay the sheet material on the roof.
Additionally, conventional applicators for sheet material on rooftops do not allow for direct viewing of the application of the sheet material to the roof. In these conventional pieces of equipment, the elements of the equipment themselves block the view of an operator of the conventional equipment.
These other prior art attempts fail to provide a simple roofing seam tape applicator that facilitates easy alignment of the roofing tape onto the roof in the proper position and then allows the machine to be loaded with the roll of material for further application of the seam tape to the roof.
Additionally, the prior art attempts have had difficulty in applying proper pressure to the tape across the full width of the tape. The inconsistencies may arise by improper balancing of the weight of the conventional applicators. Additionally, the conventional applicators traditionally lack the ability to adjust to imperfections in the roofing surface. As such, a proper adhesion or bond is not realized.
What is needed then is a roofing seam tape applicator that facilitates the proper alignment of the seam tape to a roof, or a membrane on the roof deck. Additionally, the applicator could include cushioned supports and pressure elements used to place the seam tape on the roof, or roofing membrane, and follow the contours of the roof when they are irregular. This type of roofing seam tape applicator is lacking in the art.